for Spanish-speaking 1st and 2nd graders
1. English phonetics: historical background
Phonetics is the "study of phonic substance and its function in spoken language" (Finch, 1982). Phonetics as a field of study is quite recent. What we know of the beginnings of the English period to the early thirteenth century is based on the testimony of orthographic representations. For those six hundred years, we have no information concerning the pronunciation habits of its language users, other than the orthographic notations used to represent them. From the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries we find an enormous quantity of written material which, to this day, "paradoxically bewilder the historical phonologist" (Jones, 1989). Tons of rhyming verses provide us with at least some testimony to contemporary phonology. A quite extensive variation in orthographic practice supplies the key to some pronunciation.
From the sixteenth through the eighteen centuries, the "level of 'direct' evidence increases dramatically; it shows sophisticated and advanced views on the speech habit of real speakers" (Jones, 1989). Jones (1989) calls the period between the eighteenth century and today, the "Cinderellas of English historical linguistic study."
Until but forty or fifty years ago, phonologists concerned themselves mostly with the study of dialects. It is only with the advent of sociolinguistic research that contemporary language mutation has come to be a major concern for the general linguist.
2. Spanish phonetics: historical background
Americans generally believe that Spanish is either easy to pronounce because it has only five open vowels, or that it is difficult to pronounce because its sounds are alien to English. They are wrong on both counts.
"There is no question that the main factor in the phonic characterization of Spanish lies in the firmness, simplicity, and clarity of its vowels. The causes that have influence...